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A review by wohnjick
The World and Man by René Descartes
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.75
I went into this book presuming it was a mostly philosophical work... this was incorrect. This is more akin to Descartes' version of a science textbook and contains mostly his breakdowns of physics and anatomy. There are some philosophical underpinnings here (corpuscularianism is a nice word you make you sound smart), but this is not a primarily philosophical work.
That being said, it wasn't a horrible read. Descartes's understandings are obviously out of date and often wrong, but I did find a new respect for him by seeing how dedicated he was as a scientific mind. And it helped that Roger Ariew's was, as Descartes would put it, clear and distinct enough to make such a dense (and surprisingly small) work accessible.
By no means a bad book and it certainly accomplishes the goal it is aiming for (to explain Descartes' understanding of the mechanics of the world and man), but unless you're looking to better understand Descartes' scientific theories it is probably of no interest to you.
That being said, it wasn't a horrible read. Descartes's understandings are obviously out of date and often wrong, but I did find a new respect for him by seeing how dedicated he was as a scientific mind. And it helped that Roger Ariew's was, as Descartes would put it, clear and distinct enough to make such a dense (and surprisingly small) work accessible.
By no means a bad book and it certainly accomplishes the goal it is aiming for (to explain Descartes' understanding of the mechanics of the world and man), but unless you're looking to better understand Descartes' scientific theories it is probably of no interest to you.